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Afghan presidential decree bans security firms
By Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan's president issued a decree Tuesday formalizing a four-month deadline for private security companies to disband — a move likely to dismay NATO and the U.S. military that rely on such firms to protect convoys and bases.
What's meeting of U.S. lawmakers, Karzai opponents mean?
By Jonathan S. Landay And Warren P. Strobel, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Mon Aug 16, 6:34 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Four members of the House of Representatives held talks last month in Europe with leaders of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, including a former vice president, opposed to President Hamid Karzai and his U.S.-backed initiative to open political negotiations with the Taliban .
Taliban fighter linked to U.S. sailors' kidnapping is slain
By the CNN Wire Staff August 17, 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Security forces killed a Taliban official with "direct ties" to the insurgent network involved in the recent kidnapping and murders of two U.S. Navy sailors, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said on Tuesday.
Afghanistan donates 1 million dollars for Pakistan flood relief
EARTHtimes.org
Kabul - Afghanistan donated 1 million dollars to Pakistan Tuesday to help the victims of devastating floods.
Afghan President Karzai calls Taliban stoning of couple 'unforgivable'
August 17, 2010 The New York Post
Afghan President Hamid Karzai reacted to the stoning death of a young couple by the Taliban on Tuesday, describing the act as "unforgivable."
AFGHANISTAN: Pakistan floods hit tent supplies
17 Aug 2010 10:41:46 GMT
KABUL, 17 August 2010 (IRIN) - Finding temporary shelter for people made homeless by floods in Afghanistan is being hampered by a shortage of tents, according to aid agencies.
Three NATO troops killed in Afghanistan
August 17, 2010 - 5:19PM AFP via Sydney Morning Herald
Three NATO soldiers were killed on Tuesday in Taliban-style bomb attacks in Afghanistan, the military said.
Amidst Shrapnel in Afghanistan, an Archaeology Discovery
August 17, 2010 Reuters via Fox News
Archaeologists in Afghanistan, where Taliban Islamists are fighting the Western-backed government, have uncovered Buddhist-era remains in an area south of Kabul, an official said on Tuesday.
Afghan police seize 17 tonnes of explosive material
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Aug 16 01:33am
Afghan police have seized nearly 17 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a key component in roadside bombs that are one of the main weapons used by insurgents against Afghan and foreign troops, a government official said on Monday. Skip related content
Aid group: Unlikely to leave Afghanistan
CNN Wire Staff August 16, 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan - The director of an international aid organization that lost members in a violent attack in Afghanistan said Monday his group is unlikely to pull out of the country, although the incident will affect its charitable work.
NATO, UN considering Taliban proposal of joint investigation into Afghan civilian deaths
New Kerala Aug 17, 2010
London - NATO and the United Nations are reportedly considering, in a cautious way, a Taliban proposal to set up a joint commission to investigate allegations of civilians being killed and wounded in the conflict in Afghanistan.
Six police mysteriously poisoned in S Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Six policemen were mysteriously poisoned in Taliban birthplace Kandahar province in south Afghanistan, an official said Tuesday.
Afghanistan wants to buy Russian weapons
MOSCOW, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan intends to buy modern weapons from Russia, the country's charge d'affaires in Russia Hafizullah Ebadi told Interfax news agency Tuesday.
17 Taliban militants killed in W Afghanistan
QALA-E-NAW, Afghanistan, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Afghan National Army (ANA) commandos backed by U.S. Special Operations Force, in efforts to root out militants in the western Badghis province, kicked off a cleanup operation on Monday, killing 17 Taliban insurgents, ANA spokesman in the region said Tuesday.
Long Goodbye for Robert Gates, His Legacy Still Taking Shape
FoxNews.com By Judith Miller August 16, 2010
It will be a long goodbye. Robert Gates confirmed today that he intends to leave his post as Secretary of Defense – at the end of 2011.
Pakistan's ISI says Islamist militants are a bigger threat than India
Examiner.com August 16th, 2010
MOMENT OF CLARITY Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), reported that for the first time in the country’s 63 year history, India is no longer Pakistan’s greatest existential threat as the number one slot has finally been filled by Islamist militants.
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Afghan presidential decree bans security firms
By Heidi Vogt, Associated Press Writer
KABUL, Afghanistan – Afghanistan's president issued a decree Tuesday formalizing a four-month deadline for private security companies to disband — a move likely to dismay NATO and the U.S. military that rely on such firms to protect convoys and bases.
Security operators — both Afghan and foreign — have become a point of contention between the government and coalition forces and the international community as complaints have mounted that the firms are poorly regulated, reckless and effectively operate outside local law.
According to the decree, security contractors currently working in Afghanistan will have to either join the Afghan police force or cease operations by the deadline.
It does provide an exception for private security firms working inside of compounds used by international groups, including embassies, businesses and non-governmental organizations.
"They will have to stay inside of the organization's compound and will have to be registered with the Interior Ministry," the decree states.
All security outside of these compounds will be provided by Afghan security forces, as will all security for supply convoys for international troops, the decree says.
The deadline was first announced Monday by Karzai's spokesman but no details were available until the decree was formally issued.
It is expected to meet resistance from NATO officials who rely heavily on private security companies to guard convoys and installations across the country. Officials in Washington have questioned whether a four-month deadline is realistic.
Karzai pledged in his inauguration speech in November to shutter both foreign and domestic security contractors by November 2011. This decree significantly speeds up the timeline.
The government has estimated that 30,000 to 40,000 armed security contractors are working in the country.
The Afghan Interior Ministry has 52 security firms licensed, but some older contracts are still being completed by unlicensed firms, according to the U.S. military. About half of the companies are Afghan-owned.
About 37 companies are working with the U.S. government, totaling about 26,000 armed security contractors. The majority of those work for the military, though some are employed by the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development, according to the military.
Any security contractor currently registered with the government will have the option to sell their weapons and equipment to the police or take them outside of the country, according to the decree. Any unlicensed contractor will have their weapons and equipment seized.
The issue of private security contractors was a topic of talks that Karzai had earlier in the day with U.S. Senator John Kerry, chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who is visiting Afghanistan, along with Gen. David Petraeus, the top commander of U.S. and NATO forces, and U.S. Ambassador Karl Eikenberry. The U.S. officials are pushing Afghan officials to battle government corruption.
A statement Tuesday by Karzai's office said he recently sent a letter to President Barack Obama saying the war strategy needed to be reviewed. Without mentioning neighboring Pakistan, Karzai said in the letter that there is a need to focus on the "roots and sanctuaries" of terrorism outside Afghanistan instead of only fighting the war in Afghan homes and villages.
Also Tuesday, officials said bomb attacks killed three U.S. service members and three Afghan.
Two of the Americans were killed in a bombing in the east, while the third was killed in the west, NATO said. It did not provide details on where or how they were attacked.
Meanwhile, a bomb hidden on a motorbike killed two Afghan street cleaners early Tuesday in eastern Ghazni province. The bomb, which was remote-detonated, appeared to be targeting a police truck that was driving down the street in Ghazni city, said Ismail Jahangir, a provincial government spokesman. The explosion also wounded one police officer and four other civilians, he said.
In southern Kandahar province, a tribal elder and district council member was killed early Tuesday by a bomb planted in his office in the border town of Spin Boldak, according to the border police chief for the area, Gen. Razaq Khan.
The bomb had been hidden under a cushion that exploded when the elder, Zekirya, leaned against the it, Khan said.
Also, NATO reported that they killed a Taliban operative named Bilal who had ties to the network involved in last month's killing of two U.S. sailors in central Afghanistan. NATO said it is unknown what role, if any, he played in their deaths.
Bilal was killed Monday in Logar province's Charkh district, NATO said.
____
Associated Press writers Deb Riechmann, Rahim Faiez and Mirwais Khan contributed to this report.
(This version CORRECTS New top. Updates with Sen. Kerry visit, death of operative involved in kidnapping of NATO forces. Corrects that there are 26,000 contractors working with the U.S., instead of in all of Afghanistan. Minor edits throughout.)
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What's meeting of U.S. lawmakers, Karzai opponents mean?
By Jonathan S. Landay And Warren P. Strobel, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Mon Aug 16, 6:34 pm ET
WASHINGTON — Four members of the House of Representatives held talks last month in Europe with leaders of Afghanistan's ethnic minorities, including a former vice president, opposed to President Hamid Karzai and his U.S.-backed initiative to open political negotiations with the Taliban .
The delegation of three Republicans and one Democrat was organized by Rep. Dana Rohrabacher , R- Calif. , who said he shares the minority leaders' objections to a deal with the Taliban , as well as their demand for changes to reduce Karzai's powers and allow greater provincial autonomy.
"None of the people of Afghanistan except for the crooks at the top are interested in a central government with all the power," Rohrabacher said in a telephone interview last week. "That's the model that we have been trying to force with our military . . . on the people of Afghanistan ."
Several experts cautioned that the July 31 meeting in Berlin could fuel the distrust with which Karzai regards the U.S. because of tensions over issues like high-level official corruption and the extensive fraud that marred his re-election last year to a second five-year term.
"Karzai is prone to seeing conspiracies everywhere and he has been concerned that the United States would desert him before he deserted the United States ," said Marvin Weinbaum , a scholar at the Middle East Institute in Washington . "He could conceivably take any meeting like this as a back-channel effort to replace him."
That possibility doesn't appear to bother Rohrabacher.
"We hope that there is a message in this that Karzai had better understand that we are aware that there is adamant opposition to any proposal to bring the Taliban back into this government," said Rohrabacher, who's been involved with Afghanistan since the 1979-89 Soviet occupation.
In addition to Rohrabacher, the Berlin talks were attended by Duncan Hunter , R- Calif. , Louie Gohmert , R- Texas , and C.A. "Dutch" Ruppersberger , D- Md. Several U.S. diplomats and intelligence officials also were present, Rohrabacher said.
Rohrabacher is a senior member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee , while Hunter is on the Armed Services Committee, Gohmert is on the Judiciary Committee and Ruppersberger is on the Intelligence Committee.
The Afghans in Berlin "don't feel the United States is listening to them because of our relationship with Karzai," Ruppersberger said.
The State Department declined to comment, but a senior official, who requested anonymity because he wasn't authorized to speak publicly, said: "We don't have any particular concerns."
The meeting was held as Karzai pursues — with the blessings of the United States and its NATO allies and at the urging of Pakistan — an effort to open talks with the Taliban and allied groups on a political agreement to end the nearly nine-year war.
Karzai's national reconciliation initiative has ignited tensions with leaders of the Northern Alliance , the now-disbanded force of mostly minority Tajiks, Uzbeks and Hazaras that drove the Taliban from power with the help of U.S. air power in 2001.
He's purged most former Northern Alliance leaders from top positions, leaving his inner circle dominated by Pashtuns, the country's largest ethnic group, who traditionally have governed Afghanistan . They also dominate the Taliban and live mostly in southern and eastern Afghanistan .
Tajik, Uzbek and Hazara leaders, whose communities are mostly in central and northern Afghanistan and who battled the Taliban takeover in the 1990s, oppose a power-sharing deal. They fear that the minorities will be marginalized and that the Taliban will renege on any agreement and move to reimpose their harsh brand of Islamic rule.
"The current system has taken the shape of a dictatorship. We want more authority given to the provinces," Hazara leader Mohammad Mohaqiq, one of the Afghans who met the House members, told McClatchy in Kabul .
Mohaqiq was joined in Berlin by Ahmad Zia Massoud , the brother of Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud , who was assassinated by two al Qaida operatives two days before Sept. 11, 2001 . Ahmad Zia Massoud , a Tajik, served as the senior of two vice presidents during Karzai's first term.
Also with them were Mohaqiq's deputy, Hussain Ali Yasa , and Faizullah Zaki , a lawmaker and top aide to the notorious Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum, a former communist general who played key role in ousting the Taliban and allegedly allowed the murder of up to 2,000 Taliban prisoners.
Rohrabacher's involvement with Afghanistan began during the Soviet occupation, when he served as a speechwriter for the late President Ronald Reagan . He entered the country with U.S.-backed rebels in 1988 after winning election to his first term, and then again during Taliban rule.
He said the only way to stabilize Afghanistan would be for the U.S. to withdraw its nearly 100,000 troops, back the minorities' demand for more autonomy and help them rebuild their own militias and take over the fight against the Taliban .
"We can beat the radicals in Afghanistan . We can't do it by trying to force people to accept a centralized government that is totally contrary to their culture," he said.
Ruppersberger said he told the Afghan leaders that they should strengthen their regions, in part through mobilizing voters and developing natural resources, which in some areas include extensive mineral deposits. However, he cautioned them that they should work within Afghanistan's "democratic structure," rather than try to oust Karzai from office.
"I kept saying, you've got the resources, you've got the numbers, you just have to organize them," Ruppersberger said.
Rohrabacher joined liberal Democrats in July in unsuccessfully opposing House approval of $33 billion in emergency funds to support the surge of 30,000 additional U.S. troops being sent to Afghanistan under President Barack Obama's counterinsurgency strategy.
"I voted against it because I don't believe in sending troops to do something that can't be done," Rohrabacher said. "Wasting American lives on . . . sending them to accomplish a mission that no one can accomplish via the military is immoral. I'm not going send our troops off to have their legs turned into hamburger or their wives turned into widows if there is no chance that they are going to have a success in their mission and it's going to appreciably make our country safer."
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Taliban fighter linked to U.S. sailors' kidnapping is slain
By the CNN Wire Staff August 17, 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) -- Security forces killed a Taliban official with "direct ties" to the insurgent network involved in the recent kidnapping and murders of two U.S. Navy sailors, NATO's International Security Assistance Force said on Tuesday.
Afghan and coalition troops killed Bilal, "a highly active Taliban facilitator," in Logar province on Monday.
Bilal was linked to the Taliban network that abducted and killed Petty Officer 2nd Class Justin McNeley and Petty Officer 3rd Class Jarod Newlove in July, an ISAF news release said. It is not yet known what role, if any, Bilal played in the sailors' kidnapping. The insurgents' full name was not provided.
"We are happy to announce the results of this successful operation. This man was a known criminal who regularly facilitated rocket attacks against Afghan and coalition forces," said U.S. Army Col. Rafael Torres, ISAF spokesman.
"Bilal was also associated with a violent network directly responsible in the kidnapping and vicious killing of two American sailors," Torres said.
Security forces approached a targeted compound when "Bilal, who was armed with an AK-47, ran away from one of the buildings."
He "attempted to hide amongst two civilian farmers, but when the security force caught up with him, he engaged the assault force," ISAF said. "They returned fire, killing him. The farmers were not injured."
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Afghanistan donates 1 million dollars for Pakistan flood relief
EARTHtimes.org
Kabul - Afghanistan donated 1 million dollars to Pakistan Tuesday to help the victims of devastating floods.
Finance Minister Omer Zakhilwal presented the donation toPakistan's ambassador to Kabul.
"We want to express our solidarity and sympathy with our brothers and sisters in Pakistan who were hit by floods," the minister said.
The floods have killed about 1,400 people and affected 20 million others across large areas of the country. Billions of dollars in damage have been caused to infrastructure, crops, livestock and private property.
The Afghan government previously sent a medical team with supplies to attend to flood refugees.
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Afghan President Karzai calls Taliban stoning of couple 'unforgivable'
August 17, 2010 The New York Post
Afghan President Hamid Karzai reacted to the stoning death of a young couple by the Taliban on Tuesday, describing the act as "unforgivable."
Local authorities said the Taliban killed the man and woman in a remote village in the northeastern province of Kunduz on Sunday for allegedly having an affair.
"President Hamid Karzai condemned the stoning to death of two youths by the Taliban in Kunduz, deeming it unforgivable," the president's office said.
Karzai ordered security officials to bring the culprits to justice.
Local authorities said a 23-year-old woman and 28-year-old man were killed in public because "they had an affair," though according to the statement from Karzai's office, they "were supposed to get married."
Abdul Satar, a resident of Mullah Quli village, said that about 100 people, most of them Taliban insurgents, gathered Sunday evening as a statement was read out saying the pair confessed to their affair.
The couple had their hands bound behind their backs and were forced to stand in an empty field as their sentence was carried out, he said.
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AFGHANISTAN: Pakistan floods hit tent supplies
17 Aug 2010 10:41:46 GMT
KABUL, 17 August 2010 (IRIN) - Finding temporary shelter for people made homeless by floods in Afghanistan is being hampered by a shortage of tents, according to aid agencies.
Several vendors said they could not replenish stocks due to the floods in neighbouring Pakistan. "We were importing tents from Pakistan but the floods there have reversed the situation because our providers in Pakistan are now demanding tents from us," said Jalaluddin, a vendor.
The price in Kabul of a large tent meeting Sphere's minimum quality standards [http://www.sphereproject.org/content/view/104/84/lang,English/] and generally used by international aid agencies has risen from about US$100 in late July to over $150 on 15 August.
Flash floods have killed over 85 people and destroyed thousands of houses in 15 of Afghanistan's 34 provinces in the past month, the Afghanistan National Disasters Management Authority said, and the situation was driving up local demand for tents.
An official from an international aid agency operating in the southeast who preferred anonymity told IRIN the lack of tents posed a serious problem for people made homeless by the floods.
CARE International, another aid agency involved in flood response efforts, said it would send its last available tents to flood-affected families in the central provinces of Wardak and Logar in the next two days. "We have requested funds from our donor [the Canadian International Development Agency] to replenish stocks," Abdul Ghafoor Latifi, CARE's emergency response coordinator, told IRIN.
Non-food items, including tents, are also distributed by the UN Refugee Agency but no one from the organization was available to comment.
Rebuilding homes
Tents are at best only a short-term solution; people who have lost their homes will need to rebuild them before winter, aid agencies say.
"Tents are not the appropriate solution for Afghanistan where the winters are so severe that some areas are cut off from the rest of the country for months at a time," said Neeti Bhargava, country director of Oxfam Novib, a member of Oxfam International.
Sub-zero temperatures often spread respiratory diseases and threaten the lives of vulnerable people, [http://www.irinnews.org/Report.aspx?ReportId=76371] particularly children and pregnant women.
Aid workers warn that many of the displaced would be unable to rebuild their shelters without assistance. "With winter approaching, time is fast running out to get people out of tents and into proper homes," said Bhargava.
Meanwhile, the UN World Food Programme (WFP), which has been providing food to flood victims, is aware of the danger of roads blocked by snow. "This is a critical time for WFP ahead of Afghanistan's long, harsh winter. WFP is currently pre-positioning food in areas that could become inaccessible as early as October due to heavy snowfall," Challiss McDonough, a WFP spokeswoman, told IRIN.
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Three NATO troops killed in Afghanistan
August 17, 2010 - 5:19PM AFP via Sydney Morning Herald
Three NATO soldiers were killed on Tuesday in Taliban-style bomb attacks in Afghanistan, the military said.
Two soldiers were killed in an attack in eastern Afghanistan, a troubled region which sees regular Taliban attacks, the force said in a statement.
Another died in a similar attack on Tuesday, in the west of the country. The nationalities of the casualties were not disclosed, according to NATO policy.
Most of the troops in eastern Afghanistan are Americans, while an Italian contingent is based in the western province of Herat.
The latest deaths took to 436 the number of international soldiers killed in Afghanistan since the start of the year, compared to 520 for the whole of 2009, according to an AFP count based on figures kept by the icasualties.org website.
There are close to 150,000 troops in Afghanistan in a US-led NATO force fighting to shore up Afghanistan's fledgling government and fight a Taliban-led insurgency, raging since the Islamists were thrown from power in late 2001.
Meanwhile, two roadside bombs in Afghanistan killed seven civilians, including at least three women and a child, police said on Tuesday.
A remote-controlled bomb on a motorcycle parked on a bridge in southern Ghazni city detonated prematurely, killing two passers-by and wounding another five, including two children, police said.
The blast took place just as a police convoy was about to pass, said Mohammad Osman, commander of Afghanistan's southeastern police zone.
"Two civilians were martyred and another five were wounded," he said.
The bomber had been planning to trigger the device by remote control and was injured in the explosion and had been arrested, Osman said.
In a similar incident late on Monday, a roadside bomb ripped through a civilian vehicle in Shindand district, in the western province of Herat, killing five civilians and injuring two, said Lal Mohammad Omarzai, the district chief.
"Three women, a man and a child were killed and two other women were hurt," he said.
Omarzai blamed the attack on "enemies of Afghanistan", a term used to refer to Taliban militants.
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Amidst Shrapnel in Afghanistan, an Archaeology Discovery
August 17, 2010 Reuters via Fox News
Archaeologists in Afghanistan, where Taliban Islamists are fighting the Western-backed government, have uncovered Buddhist-era remains in an area south of Kabul, an official said on Tuesday.
"There is a temple, stupas, beautiful rooms, big and small statues, two with the length of seven and nine meters, colorful frescos ornamented with gold and some coins," said Mohammad Nader Rasouli, head of the Afghan Archaeological Department.
"Some of the relics date back to the fifth century (AD). We have come across signs that there are items maybe going back to the era before Christ or prehistory," he said.
"We need foreign assistance to preserve these and their expertise to help us with further excavations."
The excavation site extends over 12 km (7.5 miles) in the Aynak region of Logar province just south of Kabul, where China is mining copper ore as part of its multi-billion dollar investments in the Central Asian country.
Rasouli said the mining work had not harmed the sites -- which were known but had not been examined in detail -- but smugglers managed to loot and destroy some relics before the government excavation work began last year.
Government and foreign troops are battling an insurgency led by the radical Taliban movement which destroyed Buddhist statues at Bamyan during its five-year control of the mountainous country from 1996 to 2001, viewing the monuments as an affront to Islam.
Many antiquities and historical sites were destroyed or pillaged during decades of civil war and foreign interventions.
Now almost entirely Muslim, Afghanistan has seen eras in its long history when other faiths such as Hinduism, Buddhism and Zoroastrianism were widely practiced.
Rasouli said the government did not have the resources to move the relics from the remote area, which has seen some clashes during the insurgency, but hoped to build a museum there instead.
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Afghan police seize 17 tonnes of explosive material
Reuters via Yahoo! UK & Ireland News - Aug 16 01:33am
Afghan police have seized nearly 17 tonnes of ammonium nitrate, a key component in roadside bombs that are one of the main weapons used by insurgents against Afghan and foreign troops, a government official said on Monday. Skip related content
While the discovery of caches of materials used to make bombs is not unusual, this was the largest find of its kind since the chemical was banned earlier this year.
Home-made roadside bombs are among the most effective weapons used by the Taliban and other insurgents. Independent monitoring website iCasualties.org estimates roadside bombs, or improvised explosive devices, have accounted for about 60 percent of fatalities among foreign troops over the past three years.
The total number of foreign troops killed in Afghanistan since the Taliban were ousted in 2001 topped 2,000 at the weekend. June was the worst month of the conflict for foreign forces, with 102 killed.
The cache was uncovered on Sunday by Afghan border police who found 16,819 kg of the material in southern Kandahar province, the heartland of the Taliban and a focal point of the insurgency, Interior Ministry spokesman Zemarai Bashary said.
He said four suspects were arrested, including two Pakistani nationals.
The seizure was the biggest of its kind since President Hamid Karzai banned the use, production, storage or sale of ammonium nitrate -- commonly used as fertiliser -- early this year.
The use of ammonium nitrate in roadside bombs has spread as a resurgent Taliban moved out of the strongholds in the south and east in recent years, especially into the once-calm north where pockets of resistance have sprung up.
Finding and clearing such bombs is one of the most painstaking and time-consuming tasks for foreign and Afghan troops, with bombs often cleverly hidden on dirt tracks, dry river beds or even under tarmac roads.
Civilians are also often victims of such bombs.
A U.N. report last week said civilian casualties had risen 31 percent in the first six months of this year compared with same period last year, including 1,271 killed. Of those, the Taliban and other insurgents were blamed for 76 percent of casualties.
(Reporting by Sayed Salahuddin; Editing by Paul Tait and Sanjeev Miglani)
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Aid group: Unlikely to leave Afghanistan
CNN Wire Staff August 16, 2010
Kabul, Afghanistan - The director of an international aid organization that lost members in a violent attack in Afghanistan said Monday his group is unlikely to pull out of the country, although the incident will affect its charitable work.
Ten multinational medical aid workers -- six Americans, two Afghans, a Briton and a German -- were shot and killed Thursday by gunmen in Badakhshan, a remote northeastern region of the country. Two other Afghans on the team are alive.
Dirk Frans, the director of the International Assistance Mission, said the team had trekked about 100 miles into the mountains of one of the poorest and most remote areas of Afghanistan.
The Americans were identified as Cheryl Beckett, 32; Brian Carderelli, 25; Dr. Thomas Grams, no age given; Glen Lapp, 40; Tom Little, 61; and Dan Terry, 63.
Also killed were Mahram Ali, 50, and a man identified only as Jawed, 24, both of Afghanistan; Daniela Beyer, 35, of Germany; and Dr. Karen Woo, 36, of Britain.
"They were selfless professionals who volunteered themselves for the mission," Frans said.
"As to whether we will withdraw or not, it's unlikely we will. We've been here for 44 years. We've been here through all the civil war ... So I don't think this is the time to leave. But it will affect our work," he said.
His concerns were echoed by top U.S. officials on Monday.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on Monday condemned the attack, calling it a "despicable act of wanton violence."
"We are heartbroken," she said. The workers, she noted, were unarmed and on a volunteer humanitarian mission. The killings show the "lengths to which (the Taliban) will go to advance their twisted ideology," she said.
Richard Holbrooke, the U.S. special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, said the attack was carried out by a "small ruthless minority" that does not represent the popular view in Afghanistan.
The bodies of the two Afghans have been handed back to their families. The bodies of the foreign victims will be handed to their respective embassies, the Afghan interior ministry said Monday.
Family members of five of the eight foreign victims have said they want the bodies of their relatives to be buried in Afghanistan.
Although plans have not been finalized by families and the authorities involved, some victims may be returned to the United States for autopsies, said Caitlin Hayden, spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy.
Frans, the director of the International Assistance Mission, said the tragedy could impact future aid efforts in Afghanistan.
"It has already affected many people," he said. "Many of our staff are afraid."
The Taliban has claimed responsibility for the attack, said Karl Eikenberry, U.S. ambassador in Afghanistan, but "we do not know whether they are responsible or simply taking credit for the cowardly and despicable acts of others."
Aqa Nwor Kentoz, the police chief in the province, said the gunmen stopped the group on the road, took their belongings and shot them one by one.
An Afghan was released because he was reciting excerpts from the Quran, Kentoz said.
Frans said the staff was not proselytizing. He added the group had permission from the government to be in Afghanistan.
Hans Ronnlund, the assistant to the executive director of the mission group, denied statements by the Taliban that the medical staff was carrying Bibles. Ronnlund said the International Assistance Mission is a humanitarian development organization formed by various Christian groups but said medical staffers do not carry Bibles.
Frans said he has doubts about the team being targeted directly by the Taliban and questioned the motive for the murders, citing a police account that the victims were also robbed.
The team had spent several days in Nuristan province, where they treated people with cataracts and other eye conditions, Clinton said in a statement over the weekend.
"At their next stop, they planned to run a dental clinic and offer maternal and infant health care," Clinton said. "They were unarmed. They were not being paid for their services. They had traveled to this distant part of the world because they wanted to help people in need. They were guests of the Afghan people. The Taliban stopped them on a remote road on their journey from Nuristan, led them into a forest, robbed them and killed them."
Badakhshan, bordered by Tajikistan to the north and Pakistan to the south, is a sparsely populated region comprised of a majority Tajik population and an Uzbek and Kyrgyz minority. Badakhshan was the only province that was not controlled by the Taliban when it ruled Afghanistan.
CNN's Jill Dougherty, Jason Kessler and Alison Harding contributed to this report.
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NATO, UN considering Taliban proposal of joint investigation into Afghan civilian deaths
New Kerala Aug 17, 2010
London - NATO and the United Nations are reportedly considering, in a cautious way, a Taliban proposal to set up a joint commission to investigate allegations of civilians being killed and wounded in the conflict in Afghanistan.
The Guardian quoted a spokesman for the UN, which has for years had unofficial contacts with insurgents and sees itself as an independent arbitrator in the conflict, as saying, "We are aware of the statement and we are considering it."
"Some senior officers at the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) are keen on the idea but that no steps could be taken until it is considered at the highest political level," a western diplomat said.
The Taliban's statement, which was posted on its website, would revive a divisive debate about whether to conduct any formal talks with insurgents who are responsible for the majority of civilian casualties in Afghanistan, and whose assassination campaign now kills one person a day on average, the paper said.
The Taliban statement called for the establishment of a body consisting of members from the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, UN human rights investigators, NATO and the Taliban.
"The stated committee should be given a free hand to survey the affected areas, as well as people, in order to collect the precise information and the facts and figures and disseminate its findings worldwide," the Taliban said in the statement.
--ANI
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Six police mysteriously poisoned in S Afghanistan
KANDAHAR, Afghanistan, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Six policemen were mysteriously poisoned in Taliban birthplace Kandahar province in south Afghanistan, an official said Tuesday.
The official, who declined to be identified, told Xinhua that the incident occurred in Kandahar city Monday night and all the six policemen have been taken to hospital for medical treatment.
Meantime, spokesman for Kandahar's provincial administration Zalmai Ayubi confirmed the incident, saying some policemen were mysteriously poisoned.
Nevertheless, he did not give the exact number of the poisoned policemen, saying investigation is underway.
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Afghanistan wants to buy Russian weapons
MOSCOW, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Afghanistan intends to buy modern weapons from Russia, the country's charge d'affaires in Russia Hafizullah Ebadi told Interfax news agency Tuesday.
"Afghanistan definitely needs powerful national armed forces for the purpose of protecting its national sovereignty and territorial integrity," he was quoted by the agency as saying.
He added the country has a right to turn to any country to meet its needs.
So far the diplomat said no agreements were expected to be signed at the upcoming meeting with Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in Russia's southern city of Sochi.
The leaders of Russia, Afghanistan, Pakistan and Tajikistan will hold talks Wednesday.
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17 Taliban militants killed in W Afghanistan
QALA-E-NAW, Afghanistan, Aug. 17 (Xinhua) -- Afghan National Army (ANA) commandos backed by U.S. Special Operations Force, in efforts to root out militants in the western Badghis province, kicked off a cleanup operation on Monday, killing 17 Taliban insurgents, ANA spokesman in the region said Tuesday.
"A joint cleanup operation by Afghan army and international coalition troops was launched Monday and goes on today in Balamurghab district, as a result 17 militants have been killed," spokesman Afghan Corps 207 in the region Najebullah Khan told Xinhua.
He said two sons of Mullah Abdul Rahman, the Taliban's shadow governor for Badghis, were among those killed in the operation.
Ten more insurgents were injured in the operation, he further said.
There were no casualties on the troops, he said.
"A militants' group commander in the area Mullah Abdul Hkim was also killed in the raids," he said, without saying when the operation will be concluded.
Taliban militants fighting Afghan and international forces have yet to make comments.
The restive Balamurghab district has been regarded as Taliban stronghold in Badghis and the neighboring Ghor province.
Taliban fighters, whose regime was ousted from power in a U.S.- led military campaign in late 2001 and make a bloody comeback four years ago, have vowed to speed up activities this year in the militancy-hit country.
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Long Goodbye for Robert Gates, His Legacy Still Taking Shape
FoxNews.com By Judith Miller August 16, 2010
It will be a long goodbye. Robert Gates confirmed today that he intends to leave his post as Secretary of Defense – at the end of 2011.
That is no surprise. The only Bush hold-over in the Obama Cabinet, Gates always vowed to quit before the end of President Obama’s first term; he has been famously keen on returning home to the Pacific Northwest ever since he accepted this Mission Impossible of a job.
But having served eight presidents, Gates is clearly not a cut-and-run-kind of guy. By the time he retires, as he pointed out in his interview with Foreign Policy, it will be clear whether or not Obama’s strategy in Afghanistan is working. (He said little about Iraq, by the way, which is not exactly an unmitigated success). If it is not, he’ll propose “adjustments” in December, he confirmed.
Aware of the growing public fury over wasteful government spending, especially in time of war, Gates has most recently proposed to cut $100 billion dollars worth of Defense spending over five years, close an entire command, and eliminate 50 of the Pentagon’s 1,000 generals and admirals, whose ranks have swelled by 13 percent in 15 years, even as the armed forces themselves have contracted. That may prove as tough a fight as Iraqand Afghanistan.
In his most recent Newsweek column, Fareed Zarkaria noted that every layer of the Pentagon bureaucracy is larger today than it was during the Cold War’s peak.
Quoting Paul Light of New York University's Wagner School of Public Service, he writes that in 1960, there were 78 deputy assistant secretaries of defense.
Today there are 530. While Gates has often complained that there are “more musicians in U.S. military marching bands than members of the Foreign Service,”
Zakaria observes, the Pentagon now has “10 times as many accountants as there are Foreign Service officers.” The portrait behind the SecDef’s desk is that of Dwight Eisenhower -- the legendary general-turned-president who so presciently warned about the threat to America of the “military-industrial complex.”
Fred Kaplan, who conducted the interview for Foreign Policy, praised Gates for having done more to change the way the Pentagon does business “than any defense secretary since Robert McNamara.” (Several at the Pentagon took exception to this encomium, saying that Gates was a cautious insider whose ostensibly revolutionary changes are less substantive than they would seem and more smoke-and-mirror accounting. ) But Kaplan also wondered whether Gates might be bluffing by signaling so early plans to leave.
I think Gates is deadly keen on leaving. When Obama first nominated him, I praised the then president-elect for appointing someone who was almost everything he wasn’t, especially experienced. Unlike the president-elect himself, Gates was ultra-savvy about Washington's bureaucratic ways. In other words, he not only knew where the proverbial bodies were buried, he had probably buried a few of them himself. And he was able to change his views based on those pesky “facts on the ground,” a rare quality in Washington. Though he initially opposed the “surge” of forces in Iraq, for instance, he gradually changed his mind and implemented the surge and the rest of the counterinsurgency strategy that dramatically reduced the violence in Iraq. Later on, he publicly chastised the Air Force for failing to pull its full service weight in Iraq, fired the Air Force's civilian secretary and top military officer after nuclear weapons and components were mistakenly shipped across country and abroad and slashed weapons systems he
considered obsolete. Now he’s tackling some of the waste – perhaps not deeply enough – that I saw on my most recent trip to Iraq.
But part of his success, argued one Pentagon insider, is due not only to his legendary pragmatism, but also to what he is not. Just as Obama’s initial popularity was boosted by the fact that he was not George W. Bush, on whom much of the country had soured, Gates benefited greatly from not being Donald Rumsfeld, his hugely unpopular predecessor. If Rumsfeld was fire, Gates was ice.
Unlike Obama, Secretary Gates has remained popular and well-regarded – at least so far. How he will be regarded in history rests largely on the success or failure of his administration’s policies in Iraq and Afghanistan. In announcing his impending departure so long in advance, he’s giving himself, and his administration ample time to adjust for failure.
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Pakistan's ISI says Islamist militants are a bigger threat than India
Examiner.com August 16th, 2010
MOMENT OF CLARITY Pakistan's premier intelligence agency, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), reported that for the first time in the country’s 63 year history, India is no longer Pakistan’s greatest existential threat as the number one slot has finally been filled by Islamist militants.
This was the conclusion of an internal national security assessment the powerful spy agency conducts regularly. Although many experts inside and outside of Pakistan have known this to be true for years, it is a startling development considering the ISI has been roundly accused of being in bed with the same militants they called out in this report, including Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT), which New Delhi has blamed for carrying out the Mumbai attacks.
Thus, it’s hard to tell if the ISI finally snapped out of a thick fog of denial or if they decided to turn themselves in because their projects spiraled out of control.
Regardless, yet to be determined is whether or not General Ashfaq Parvez Kayani and the civilian government will accept these findings and change military strategies or deployment scenarios in the least. The U.S. is hoping Kayani pulls troops from Pakistan’s eastern border with India to focus on rooting out extremist groups in sanctuaries in the western border region.
Top among these groups is the Haqqani Network who the U.S. believes is hiding out in North Waziristan where they plan and launch attacks against U.S. and NATO troops in Afghanistan. The Pakistani military has protected groups like the Haqqanis for years because Pakistan has always seen them as an anti-Indian asset. Perhaps this report will trigger a paradigm shift.
The reality is Kayani and the armed forces have had their hands full in their constant struggle against Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) in other provinces. The Pakistan Taliban have killed almost 7,000 civilians over the past 7 years and 2,000 Pakistani troops over the past two (I wonder if the ISI had this data readily available in their previous studies, because it seems to point out who the biggest security threat has been this entire time).
For Afghanistan and America’s sake, hopefully the military and the civilian government overcome their India paranoia – or as I call it “obsessive strategic depth disorder” - because Pakistan’s internal extremists are not just a Pakistan problem, for they threaten the stability of the entire region. And if Pakistan remains violently unstable, Afghanistan shall never see peace.
THE ENEMY WITHIN Back on June 6th I wrote an article entitled “Time for Pakistan to embrace "smarter" strategic depth”, referring to Pakistan’s strategy to counterbalance the conventionally superior ‘Hindu India’ with ‘Islamic Depth’ by strengthening relations with Afghanistan and the Arab world. If faced with a worst-case scenario, Pakistan could then relocate west into Afghanistan in order to roll-back India. The dynamics of the strategy have changed in this nuclear age, but objectives remain similar. Now, Pakistan’s goal is to always have a foothold or retain some type of influence in Afghanistan lest India use it to launch attacks.
Another reasonable concern is the very real possibility that after the U.S. withdraws – if Petraeus ever allows it - the Taliban would likely retake Kabul. So, hedging bets, so to speak, seems prudent. However, this approach is viable only if said “foothold” doesn’t cause Afghanistan to deteriorate in anyway – then everyone loses. Ultimately, the last thing Pakistan needs to see is the Haqqani Network or any version of the Taliban in power next door. From the same article:
Pakistan is in drastic need of a foreign policy paradigm shift as they continue to cling to a post-nuclear variation of “strategic depth” at their own peril; because Pakistan’s geopolitical rivalry with India will become irrelevant if the state is devoured from within by extremists.
Extremism is a bigger existential threat than India right now, thus Pakistan can no longer afford to nurture home-grown Islamist groups nor can they afford the establishment of a terrorist state next door. If Afghanistan should fall to the Taliban, Pakistan will never be able to effectively address its own extremist problem.
In another piece published the same day entitled “Pakistan reaps whirlwind from enemy within”, I highlighted a disturbing rise in the number of suicide bombings that originated from the interior, in areas like Punjab which is Pakistan’s heartland and not the wild frontiers.
Another disturbing development was how terrorist organizations, operating within Pakistan’s borders, formerly disparate, were now coming together in an unholy alliance many began referring to as the “Punjabi Taliban”:
The militant entities that Pakistan originally established to terrorize India are now terrorizing Pakistan itself as a number of groups begins to merge, forming a jihadist conglomerate now bent on overthrowing the state.
The jihadist syndicate that has risen to threaten the interior consists of three major indigenous radical movements - Lashkar-e-Janghvi (LeJ), the Sipah-e-Sohaba Pakistan and Jaish-e-Mohammad — which has recently forged stronger ties with the Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan and Al Qaeda.
In April, LeJ (not to be confused with LeT) sent a suicide bomber into a civil hospital in Quetta that killed 11 people. The next day, two LeJ burqa-clad bombers killed 44 refugees who were waiting in line for relief goods. What should be concerning to General Kayani is how these interior groups have turned against the military as well:
And if there’s any question their creation has turned against them, military brass need look no further than the RA Bazaar area in Lahore, home to quite a few army officials, where 57 people, including eight soldiers, were killed by twin suicide bombers who were working on behalf of the Punjabi Taliban who were unquestionably targeting the army.
POLITICAL WILL Everyone realizes the military has much to think about, but the military will be handcuffed by political leaders who support the extremists. Will the political leaders take the ISI conclusions to heart? Because their support for militants is just as bad as the ISI’s and at least the ISI kept their links covert:
One can’t blame the military apparatus alone, political leaders are culpable as well, especially in Punjab where the provincial head Shahbaz Sharif, a leader of the conservative Pakistan Muslim League, not only doesn’t condemn the extremists – he panders to them. According to the New York Times, two months ago Mr. Sharif pleaded to the Taliban, asking them not to target Punjab because his party and the Taliban had one enemy in common: the United States.
In an even more blatant example, pulling the most surreal campaign gimmick, a provincial law minister campaigned alongside the leader of militant group Sipah-e-Sohaba. But that isn’t as telling of the underlying problem in Pakistan as the fact the candidate was able to win because of the terrorist party’s support.
Point being, if Islamist militants are Pakistan’s number one existential threat, perhaps politicians should cease proclaiming allegiance to them for all their constituents to hear, and find some other campaign stunts to replace the genius idea of parading around with terrorist leaders. And one wonders why these extremist groups are so accepted and even glorified.
SOLUTION Pakistan’s continual pursuance of strategic depth is not because they are stupid – it is because they had pretty good reasons to fear what was going on in Afghanistan. Karzai is an emotional basketcase who could declare full allegiance to India at any moment.
Meanwhile India has opened up its coffers and has wisely sunk billions of dollars of investment into Afghanistan, even to the chagrin of the United States who wants Pakistan and India to be on good terms. The challenge for Pakistan will be putting Jammu and Kashmir on the backburner because full focus needs to be on stabilizing Afghanistan.
Afghans and Pakistanis can agree on one thing, which is that Afghan President Hamid Karzai is a corrupt and illegitimate puppet of the U.S. government clad in fancy hat and cape – and nothing more. Thus, instead of General Kayani working behind the scenes to strike a power-sharing arrangement between Karzai and the Haqqani Network – an alliance that combines the worst conceivable elements of all worlds, Pakistan should work with highly-respected Afghan leaders, and even the best and the brightest of the Afghan Diaspora, to implement a government that will satisfy all parties.
The ideal government in Kabul would be one that is unifying, stable and as incorruptible as possible. One not beholden to any foreign power – be it the U.S., India or any other country. Finding this type of regime is the mission, otherwise we are stuck with Karzai - or, even worse:
should the Taliban oust Karzai and take control of Afghanistan, the question would not be if extremists will be blowing open the doors of power in Islamabad because, by that point, the real question would be more a matter of when.
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